22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [29]
By mid-term, she finally manages to find a way to change the one-act play. She gives Aurek her headscarf at the school gates, and if he has that to hold, he lets her walk away. It pains her to reveal her grey hair to the world, the unruly kinks and curls that are forming as it grows longer. But it is the only way.
She walks briskly, head up, back straight, past the other mothers. Ten agonizing minutes down the road, she stops, her heart racing, and runs back to the school, staring at the empty playground. She allows herself a few moments like this before she has to hurry across town to get to work, knowing already that she will be late.
Paris Fashions factory gates are high and wooden, held between two tall red-brick pillars. They are always shut, except when the lorries bring fabric and take clothes away. There is a door in one of the wooden gates that opens to let the women who work there come in and go out.
Silvana notices the other women chatting as they walk along the road to work, but they never talk to her. As they enter the factory gates, they all fall silent, concentrating on not bumping their heads on the frame of the small entrance or tripping over the wooden step; if anyone does, they become the first joke of the morning. Then the laughter, breaking the silence on either side of the big wooden gates, lasts until they are all sitting at the machines and the foreman walks among them, nodding approval as their sewing machines rattle into life and each woman watches her needle stitch a path through the day.
Several times now, Silvana has had to knock on the door and wait for the foreman to open it for her. He looks at his watch as if it is a filthy thing, and then at her as if she is responsible for its state, and her cheeks burn as she apologizes for her lateness, trying to seem as though she cares about the job.
She hunches over her machine and does her best to look industrious. Around her, the women’s talk is easy and full of jokes and gossip about people she knows nothing about. Occasionally another woman tries to make conversation with Silvana, but she doesn’t answer. She pretends to be having problems with the skirt band she is sewing, and hopes they will leave her alone. The work isn’t too bad. She remembers how to sew. She’d made all her own clothes when she lived with her parents, but still, looking as if she is concentrating on something makes it easier to be left alone with her own thoughts.
Every day, she fights the desire to leave her work and take Aurek out of school. As she stitches she imagines the day with him: how they will stay in bed curled up for warmth in the mornings; how she will trace the narrow dip in the small of his neck and breathe the damp child smell behind his ear. She will tend the herbs she and Janusz have planted in the garden while Aurek plays until it is time for dinner, which they will prepare together, Aurek shaping dumplings and Silvana cutting potatoes.
Then she will tell Aurek stories. Stories about Pan Zagloba, the lackadaisical nobleman, and Jan Skrzetuski, the virtuous knight. Stories of aristocrats and beautiful maidens saved by bravery and courage from evil barons. Horses gallop through the stories, arrows are fired, wild boars caught, bears hunted. Now she is far from home, she tells him stories of her family, of her grandmother and her childhood. She resurrects her brothers, giving them long lives and summers spent fishing in the lake and climbing trees, and reinvents her parents as loving, sober people.
Janusz never mentions his sisters or his family. She doesn’t blame him. Not knowing where they are is a terrible thing. She wishes she could have given him some news of them. Janusz has told her he thinks they must be in Russia. As a functionary in local government, it is quite likely his father was arrested. More than that, Janusz will not say. And she doesn’t push him. While Silvana tells stories of her childhood,